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Monday, November 24, 2014

Secularization

People are sometimes distraught when more murders of
innocent Jewish victims occur at the hands of ruthless Palestinian Arabs. Will
it never cease? How could a man run down a young woman in his van, then turn
around and park and cross the road with a knife and systematically stab her to
death. Two people tried to stop him and were also stabbed, until he was shot
several times, but is still alive in hospital in Israel, receiving excellent
health care. A youth attacked and stabbed a young soldier at random at the busy
Haganah train station in Tel Aviv, and stabbed him until he died of his wounds.
This Palestinian Arab was captured and is in prison. Two Palestinian terrorists
entered a synagogue in Jerusalem while Jews were praying and murdered 4 of them
as well as a Druse policeman in cold blood. There is such hatred, it is almost
incomprehensible. Yet, similar things occur in the US almost every month, a
student with a gun goes into a school and shoots dead from 1 to 20 people, and
for what reason? It makes no sense, yet it happens all the time. The common
theme is that these murderous acts are irrational.

It has been noted that such murders of Jews have been
going on here for over 100 years. From the time Jews reappeared on the scene,
although some Arabs welcomed them and worked with them, but most have responded
violently. There were murders of Jews in the 1880s, the 1920s, the 1930s, the
1940s and on and on. What is the origin of this intense hatred, primarily it is
tribal. Yes, it has a religious origin, in the exclusiveness of Islam, the
belief that all men must be either converted to Islam (submission) or
must die. We see this process working very efficiently nowadays in the
region of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, where massacres and beheadings on
religious, ethnic and tribal basis are unfortunately commonplace. What could
oppose and prevent these kind of acts? Unfortunately only defeating the armies
of the religious extremists will work in the short run. And this is also true
of the Palestinian fanatics, but in the longer run the only solution is
secularization.

Secularization is the process that has occured throughout
the Western world as a consequence of two related things, the rise of science
and the demise of Christianity. The democratization of the West has occured
gradually over hundreds of years as a result of a process in which the hold that
religion, in this case Christianity, had over the minds and lives of men was
gradually reduced, and the rights of the individual, the concept of human
rights, has taken hold. The development of science played a very important role
in this process, since it has replaced religion as the ultimate source of
authority in our societies. We no longer go to the priest for the answer to all
our questions, we go to the scientist and the doctor. Scientific medicine and
hygiene has doubled our life expectancy over the course of the last century.
The only societies that have thrived in the modern world are those that have
embraced science and secularization.

In secular society, in principle, it is not important what
an individual believes as far as religion is concerned, as long as he or she
adheres to the basic laws set down by secular society. These laws, civil and
criminal, may be derived from religion, but now stand independently, and must
have an indepengent judiciary to implement them, and there must be free speech
and a free press and protection of minority rights. All these factors are the
basis of a modern liberal democracy that tolerates individual differences in
belief. No society based on religion can compare to the kind of society that
has evolved in the West. We see the return to a purely
religious concept of a medieval society as retrograde and dangerous, and we must
oppose it.

I wish that Palestinian society showed signs of
secularization and democratization, but it unfortunately does not. They oppose
the existence of a Jewish State, Israel, as they oppose the existence of Jews,
on the basis of blind hatred driven by religious and tribal fervor. The only
short term solution is to fight them and defeat them, the only long term
solution is secularization. And the only way I see this happening is for Israel
to take over these areas and force them to accept our version of a secular
state, in which minority rights are respected and all religious views are
tolerated. Whether or not Islam can co-exist with secularization is still a
question. Turkey was supposed to have been the example that proves the rule,
but now that looks increasingly unlikely. In effect, secularization is the only
cure for religious domination of society.